BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – There is some optimism that live music will return to Western New York, though one local music promoter believes it will be limited to regional acts and not national acts.
Chris Ring, Founder and Owner of After Dark Presents, believes some artists could return to the stage this summer. However, he said it’s been a “complete nightmare” for promoters because they can’t book shows.
“We’re anticipating there still being capacity restrictions, six-feet apart and social distancing requirements,” Ring said. “Seated shows, which isn’t the most ideal situation for a lot of bands that are used to general admission, standing concerts.”
One telling sign came Wednesday when The Weeknd, the Canadian singer who is performing at the Super Bowl this Sunday, rescheduled his show at KeyBank Center to April 8, 2022. The show was initially planned for last September but rescheduled to this August before it was moved again to next year.
“A show like The Weeknd that plays in an arena definitely needs tens of thousands of people to come out to justify the expenses and pay the artists and cover all the bills,” Ring said. “It basically is saying is the whole country going to be open again? That’s the issue. It’s not just New York State. It’s California. It’s the mid-west. You need everybody to be on the same page.”
KeyBank Center still has two arena shows scheduled this summer: Justin Bieber on July 19 and Rage Against the Machine on July 29. Darien Lake Amphitheater has tickets on sale beginning with their Luke Bryan show on June 17 and several other shows into September. Bills Stadium is promoting a show on August 12 with Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Joan Jett, and Poison, plus the August 14 show with Billy Joel.
“Touring is going to be interesting, to say the least for a number of reasons,” Patrick Ryan, Co-Founder at Eventellect, a company that creates ticket strategies for sports franchises. “Once things are at 100% across the country, there’s going to be a lot of acts that need to get on the road. I think we might see some acts that were arena acts trying to step up their game and figure out how to maybe not sell out a football stadium but figure out a configuration for, say, 30,000 or 40,000 people. I think that’s going to be a trend we’re going to see.”
Ryan said football stadiums have a lot of open dates, meaning it will be more attractive for national acts. He also believes there will be a renewed focus on “alternative venues” such as soccer stadiums or baseball stadiums.
“I think that due to the glut of artists that are going to try and hit the road, we’re going to see the booking of non-traditional concert venues,” Ryan said. “I think there’s just going to be a lot of opportunity for those venues to book creatively.”
Ryan believes now is a good time for artists to win back more fans by lowering ticket prices.
“We’re seeing this in the sports space,” he said. “We’ve had dozens of partners and any team would raise their hand if (we asked) ‘Did you raise prices in certain sections too much over the past 5 years?’ I think 90% of sports teams would raise their hands and say yes…Coming out of a pandemic gives them all the excuse in the world to start fresh and say we took a sharp look at our business and are creating value zones. I think fans are going to be highly receptive and we’ve seen similar activity on the concert side of things.”
Governor Cuomo has floated the idea of utilizing rapid testing for live events, though he has not given details on the initiative.
Ring said he hopes things will open up and people won’t need to test or vaccine to enter.
“We book concerts,” Ring said. “We’re not in the health care field. These are not things we’re well-versed at. To have to mandate that every person that comes in needs to have a vaccine or show a test they took, from a implementation standpoint, it’s impossible to monitor those things.”